A mother cries as the cover is being pulled over her 17 year old son’s body. The teenager died driving with a blood alcohol level 0.07. Every year teens die driving under the influence because they gain access to illegal drugs and alcohol. The federal government needs to expand above the state level and legislate laws to further protect teens from driving under the influence by, installing ignition interlocks in the cars of first time DUI teen offenders, the requirements to get a license, and the punishments for teens driving under the influence.
To decrease the amount of drunk driving, some states have additional laws on top of the per se law which they have found effective. New Jersey has a 1.5% of its population reported driving drunk while
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For teens, you are required to first get a permit by taking a test through the school or going outside of school to take the test. Then, you must have 6 hours of driving with an instructor before taking the road test with an instructor at the Division of Motor Vehicles. However some states are way more lenient and as a result in much higher DUI counts. In Nebraska you can either take an approved course with written and road test or have “50 hours of supervised driving with your parent, guardian, or other licensed driver who is 21 years old or older” (Nebraska Driver’s Ed). Nebraska’s DUI count is 955,000 counts approximately versus New Jersey’s 360,000 (Counts). By increasing the requirements for a license the amount of DUI’s per state can decrease …show more content…
Congress passed the national Zero Tolerance Law,” making it illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to drive while under the influence. The Zero Tolerance Law makes it “legal for a police officer to conduct a breath test on a driver under the age of 21” if the officer has probable cause. However it is up to the officer to decide the punishment for the underage driver. Giving too much leniency to driver. If the federal government legislates a law to make the officer take the license away from the driver, the number of DUI’s would significantly go down “because many young people value driver's licenses so highly, they will do whatever it takes to avoid losing [their licenses].” This will ensure that most underage drivers will not drive
I think that it is agreed by all parties that the prodigious number of sober drivers in our neighborhoods, city streets, and country roads is at present deplorable to the state of our great nation. Currently, a whopping ninety-eight percent of Americans of driving age feel threatened by those who drive under the influence of alcohol, which means that only two percent of Americans are able to fully relax and enjoy themselves while on the road, and with the growing awareness, this number could be on the rise (MADD Online: General Statistics 1). What a travesty! All drivers, and passengers alike, should be put at the same risk for danger, be it damage, injury, or death.
Each year, about 5,000 teens are killed or injured in traffic crashes as a result of underage drinking and about 1,900 are due to car accidents. (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and U.S. Department of Transportation) In the newsletter, safety in numbers by National highway traffic administration and U.S department of transportation “Of all the people who died in motor vehicle crashes during 2012, 31 percent died in crashes involving a drunk driver, and this percentage remains unchanged for the past 10 years” (Vol 1, 2013). Crashes involving alcohol include fatal crashes in which a driver had a BAC of .01 g/ ld. or higher (Underage Drinking Statistics)). Deadly crashes involving alcohol are twice as common in teens compared to people 21 and older. This is because teens’ judgment skills are harmed more by alcohol. Teens who drink not only risk hurting themselves, they risk hurting their friends, family, and even strangers when driving intoxicated. Teens and parents both need a strong reminder that underage drinking is illegal and can have disastrous consequences. According to Health Day News, “one study found that in 2011, 36 percent of U.S. college students said they'd gone binge drinking (five or more drinks in one sitting) within the past two weeks, as compared to 43 percent of college students in 1988. Since 2006, the current law has reduced the rate of drunk driving crashes among young Americans” (Preidt, 2014 and DeJong, 2014). This proves that lives have been saved after the legal drinking age increased. According to an article in Time Magazine called “Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered?”, “lowering the drinking age to 18 would stop infantilizing college students, but it would probably kill mor...
This is an example of federal government overreach into state affairs. This federal pressure has manipulated states into raising the drinking age so that they would not lose millions of dollars in highway funds. The reason that the drinking age was raised to 21 is because the government promised a 10 percent increase in highway funds to each state if they did so. The main reason the drinking age was increased was the persuasion by large interest groups, such as MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). Their main arguments for raising the legal drinking age to 21 was so that the law could protect people under that age and keep them safe. Authorities state that they enforce the underage drinking law for our own personal safety. MADD’s goal is to put “mandatory ignition interlocks for all convicted drunk drivers and the development of advanced technology that will one day make cars inoperable by someone who is drunk.” They believe this will save hundreds of thousands of
Before the Drinking age was passed many states had a drinking age of 18 or 19. But the main ways the Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) got passed was from the Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Passing this act has saved quite of bit of underage accidents still today. Underage drinking has led to 2.7 million injures and 5000 deaths in the US. So with that being said the government needs to take in to consideration the risk of teens drinking and driving, in which they do with adults. In many articles the all said things around the government needs to make teen’s obey an zero tolerance to driving drunk and raise the consequence if they are caught doing so. Which seatbelt and DUI checkpoints have helped a lot to keep the numbers down of alcohol related incidents.
In 1984 the national government raised the drinking age from eighteen to twenty-one with the intention of lowering the number of deaths that resulted from drunk driving. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act enforced this change by informing states that if they did not comply they would face a reduction in highway funds under the Federal Aid Act. Upon the ratification of the law the number of traffic fatalities among 18 to 20 year olds dropped thirteen percent. If the minimum legal drinking age were to be changed for eighteen year olds the United States could see a significant n...
In an attempt to combat the issue of DUIs, a national minimum BAC level of 0.02 has also been set for drivers under age twenty one and has reportedly saved hundreds of lives for drivers between the ages of eighteen to twenty years. Educational programs in schools and communities focused on the advantages of using “designated drivers” as well as public education and lobbying groups; such as Mothers against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD) have also yielded positive effects in the reduction of DUIs (Levinthal, 2011).
In other states, laws for drunk driving do help their roads to be safer. Montana should follow suit with the laws in
The leading cause of death for U.S. teenagers is motor vehicle accidents. More than 5,000 of our teens die each year in crashes. For the purpose of this topic, “teenagers” encompasses ages ranging from 15- to 20-year-olds. I am proposing legislation to address this issue.
Drunk driving is a completely needless crime due to it not being obligatory and completely recreational. According to the DMV, every 53 minutes, someone is killed by a drunk driver and every 90 seconds, someone is injured. That totals to about 350k people affected physically by someone driving under influence. That also doesn’t include the families affected by the fatalities or injuries. Almost one out of every three traffic deaths involves drunk driving and one in three people will be involved in a drunken driving crash in their lifetime. Some may believe that driving “tipsy” is not as ba...
Drunk driving is an issue that effects many people across our nation. People do not realize the affects alcohol can have on the body and mind that slow decision making while driving. This issue begins in the home. Children see their parents, or other adults figures, have a beer or a cocktail and get in the car. Thus, making it seem like it is acceptable to drink and drive. “One in three people will be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetime” (MADD).
Dreams are people’s expectations for a better tomorrow. However, intoxicated drivers shatter those dreams without a reason or warning. Even with all the advertisements that highlights the dangers and effects of driving drunk, yet people still chose to drive while intoxicated. Many advocates are working hard to get these people off the streets, and they have been able to reduce the number of alcohol related crashes. Organizations such as Mothers against Drunk Driving have acted alongside law enforcement to reduce the horrific statistics. However, so many innocent lives are still taken by drunk drivers. In order to lower the rate of drunk driving in the United States, there is a need to revoke drunk drivers’ licenses, a need for higher rate of conviction, and a need to make ignition interlocks
It really is no secret that if the minimum legal drinking age were lowered, a large number of teens would then drink for perhaps the first time. “The age group with the most drivers involved in fatal crashes with Blood Alcohol Content levels of .08 or higher during 2011 was the twenty-one to twenty-four-year-olds” (“National Highway Traffic Facts”). Young adults are just as irresponsible at eighteen as they are at twenty-one, maybe even more irresponsible. The teenagers will indulge themselves on what they feel is a luxury the first chance they get. The young adults abuse the alcohol, and then go driving because even at twenty-one through twenty-four they are still not as responsible. If the age is lowered to eighteen, many eighteen-year-olds will go out and drink alcohol for the first time. The age group may rise to number one in fatal crashes. The National Highway Traff...
The biggest problem with drunk driving by young adults is the high rate of traffic accidents. Although young drivers ages 16 through 25 makeup only 15% of U.S. licensed drivers, they constitute 30 percent of all alcohol-related driving fatalities. This is double the amount of licensed drivers in that age group. Inexperience with both drinking and driving may contribute to this disproportionate rate. Nationwide in 1996, people ages 15 to 24 died in fatal motor vehicle crashes and 45 percent of those deaths were a result of alcohol (NHTSA 4). So it comes to no surprise that traffic crashes are the leading cause of death in the United States for people younger than 25 (NCHS 98).
In the 1990's teens would get full licensing and all privileges with little or no testing at all. It wasn’t until 1995 when around twenty states required a learning permit, but the system was still very weak, as teens only had to keep their permit for two to three weeks. But somehow, teen drivers are not as dangerous as they are today. Experts say it is mostly because of deadly distractions in and out of the vehicle (Boulard 38). In 2003, teenagers topped the charts with ten teenagers dying each day in a motor vehicle; that's over thirty-six hundred kids dying because of weak, bendy laws that are meant to protect them....
There are many facts, consequences, and risks about drunk driving explained above. In my opinion, drinking and driving are not right, and they are not worth the consequences, and it is not fair for a drunk driver to risk the lives of innocent people. For a solution to drinking in driving, every person who gets caught should have to serve at least one year in jail, so he can truly understand the consequence for putting others lives at risk. Driving under the influence not only endangers your life, but the life of others on the road. Therefore, if you must drink, don 't drive and if you must drive then don 't drink. Also, drink responsibly at a proper age because underage drinking may lead to complications, such as mental capacity and physical appearance. In my opinion, we need to make some kind of public service announcements explaining the dangers and consequences of drinking and driving. When I was in high school, I made several public service announcements with my group on this issue in my video production class, and we showed these PSAs to the students in homeroom class on the weekly basis. I believe these announcements will be beneficial for the teenagers and adults. Driving is a privilege you should not want to be taken away. However, if you ever feel you no longer want this privilege get caught driving under the influence and see how much of an inconvenience it will cause you and